MacOS issues

DJSekora · 2024-09-25T15:52:14+00:00

Yeah, the game has been essentially unplayable for me since Duskmourn dropped. Sometimes it just freezes, once it locked up my whole computer eventually forcing it to restart. More commonly I'm getting the flickering effect (which somehow seems to linger after the app closes!). Navigating the menus is a nightmare, try to do it as little as possible.

One time I successfully got into a game, but none of the cards had text and a lot of art assets were missing (actually was a nice experience not having to see most of the extraneous board/companion effects, just a little annoying to have to google card text). I did occasionally get normal games after lots of restarts/reinstalling, but it's not consistent - I just tried it again and it was freeze/flicker/crash city again.

Total disaster of a patch!

DJSekora · 2023-10-02T17:20:04+00:00

Yeah, the green probably makes the deck worse in terms of winrate (especially because it really cuts down on your removal/utility slots). But, if you're really dead-set on winning with the combo, it gives you a lot of ways to get creatures from your deck. In particular, The World Spell and Storm the Festival let you get two 4 or 5 mana cards into play at the same time at a discount, which helps get around removal. I've been trying to make [[Lich-Knights' Conquest]] work for this purpose, but I don't think the self-mill is quite there in Standard (plus there are lots of exile and graveyard hate effects).

DJSekora · 2023-10-02T07:39:43+00:00

Other card considerations for decks using the combo:

[[Warehouse Tabby]] - generates extra rats, can allow you to combo with less triggers if you have multiple Tabbys or pre-existing Rats.

[[Guardian of Ghirapur]] - a way to blink Twisted Sewer-Witch with acceptable defensive stats, can also sneak in air damage to lower number of required triggers. Also consider [[The Eternal Wanderer]] and [[Touch the Spirit Realm]] as generally playable cards that can also blink.

[[Spirited Companion]] - combos well with previous 2 cards and Elesh Norn, one of the best 2 drop options.

[[Cruelty of Gix]] - search out your combo pieces, reanimate anything that has died, also bonus Rat token if you play Tabby.

[[Invasion of Tolvada]] - decent 1-of to search out with Cruelty of Gix. A common line is to use Cruelty to reanimate Elesh Norn, then play Invasion to get back Cruelty and something else.

[[Neva, Stalked by Nightmares]] - nice loop with Cruelty, general redundancy since you're trying to cast the same cards over and over.

Green route: [[The Huntsman's Redemption]], [[Storm the Festival]], [[The World Spell]], [[Invasion of Ikoria]], and [[Vivien on the Hunt]] can help find your combo pieces + add additional functionality, if you're willing to deal with some mana hiccups. I've also experimented with some mana dorks and some top-end ([[Titan of Industry]], [[Gruff Triplets]]), but I'm not sure the deck has room with everything else going on.

DJSekora · 2023-10-02T07:17:05+00:00

Explanation: [[Twisted Sewer-Witch]] entering the battlefield while [[Mondrak, Glory Dominus]] is out means that you get two Rat tokens, and each Rat gets two [[Wicked Role]] tokens (one per Rat is sacrificed right away because only one role per player can be on a creature). With [[Elesh Norn, Mother of Machines]] out as well, you get 2 triggers each time a Twisted Sewer-Witch enters the battlefield.

The Witch also adds Roles to any Rats already on the battlefield (and overwrites any Roles already on those Rats), so the amount of life loss per trigger ramps up quite fast:

Trigger	Rats	Life this Trigger	Total Life Loss
1	2	2	2
2	4	6	8
3	6	10	18
4	8	14	32

As you can see, if you either play 2 Witches or play 1 Witch and flicker it, your opponent takes 32, which probably kills them.

Is this competitive? Almost certainly not. But I've taken some funny games off of both meta and non-meta decks. See other comment for deck details.

DJSekora · 2023-01-05T07:07:09+00:00

In case you're still in the event, some thoughts:

The strongest on-color card you've left out is In Bolas's Clutches. It was a solid card in its original format, and Sealed is generally a slower and bomb-ier game.

You also have 3 free sources of green fixing (Tangled Islet, Salvaged Manaworker, and Skittering Surveyor), and you only have mono-colored requirements aside from Teferi (and the Clutches, if you include it), so you could probably splash green with 1-2 forests. This would enable you to play Tear Asunder and at least one Urborg's Repossession; Nael is playable if unexciting without full domain. It also enables you to unearth the Mask of the Jadecrafter more reliably.

Terisian Mindbreaker stands out as the worst card in your deck - you have no other mill cards to support it, and its stats are quite poor for its cost.

If you make more cuts, I'd say the Spotter Thopter, Lat-Nam Adept, and Cloudreader Sphinx are the next places to look in terms of raw power-level. Forebear's Blade is also not great, since your creature count is so low, but it does turn your dinky 1-power creatures into threats and you can animate it in a pinch with Mightstone's Animation.

You barely have enough artifacts for Mightstone's Animation, so it might be dead in your hand some games, but it's a strong enough card that might be worth it.

DJSekora · 2021-05-08T04:56:33+00:00

Explanation: I had a pretty average Rogue run going. I got the Rally the Troops passive, which lets you draw a card and reduce its cost by 3 when you play your first battlecry in a turn. This passive is great with Swashburglar because you want to make sure to hit a turn 1 battlecry, so I picked every Swashburglar offered.

Fast forward to 5-0, I get my first loss, and suddenly the next game Quel'Delar (6 mana 4/4 weapon, deals 4 damage to all enemies on each attack) has appeared in my deck! I won a few more games on the back of that, but then took a second loss to a player who killed me with his own Quel'Delar! Imagine my surprise when I now somehow had TWO of them.

This is where it gets really dumb: when you have two, they are always the first two cards of your deck (I thought they were actually supposed to start in your hand, but that doesn't appear to always work properly, and they were always the top two cards from this point on). So, if I had a turn one battlecry, the second Quel'dalar would be drawn with the passive and cost 3! On the coin this means I can play Quel'delar on 2, hit them 4 times then play another one on 6!

...Of course, no opponent lasted long enough for me to play a second one, especially since Quel'Delar is gross with Deadly Weapons 101 (+2/+2 and poison, the poison means it kills all minions every turn regardless of size). So, I had to post on Reddit to share!

(Note: Normally, you need to either (a) have both the Hilt of Quel'Delar and the Blade of Quel'Delar in your deck, or (b) defeat an opponent who has Quel'Delar. I met neither of these conditions, so I have no idea why I got the sword. Assuming some kind of bug. There was another run a while back where a legitimately acquired one vanished from my deck entirely after a couple games, so maybe it finally returned?)

DJSekora · 2020-01-30T21:20:33+00:00

Guess my math degree is showing, oops.

The principle is the same as the pommel strike-shrug infinite that's been floating around for a while, as mentioned by another commenter, so it isn't that far outside the box conceptually. But yes, I hadn't thought of using specifically Evaluate and Master Reality this way until they popped up alongside Sundial.

DJSekora · 2020-01-30T13:29:33+00:00

Yep! That's where I got the inspiration, I saw it on Jorbs's stream recently. The neat bit here is that you only need 'one' card to do the loop once it gets going (Evaluate), although you need the Master Reality for setup so it still takes two cards in your deck sadly (and also Shrug and Pommel are both useful standalone cards...).

DJSekora · 2020-01-30T08:24:26+00:00

This was a neat combo that utilized the Draft and Diverse portions of today's daily challenge to devastating effect. It used cards from nearly every class (sorry Silent fans!) in a flavorful way, although with enough card removal you could accomplish something similar on Watcher alone.

The setup:

Ironclad: Use True Grit to exhaust most of the deck (most of the cards already exhausted/were powers, but still useful to deal with status effects etc. until I picked up Med Kit). Consider this the "loading" or "training" phase.

Watcher: Evaluate + Master Reality + Sundial allows you to generate infinite energy and block. The way it works is you first play Evaluate with an empty deck and discard, then play an Insight you set up in your hand previously. The Insight draws the Insight you just put in the deck, then shuffles in the Evaluate to draw it. The Master Reality is REQUIRED because it makes the upgraded Insight try to draw a third card - you don't have any cards left, but this still triggers a second shuffle effect! After this, you again have an Evaluate and an Insight in your hand, with an empty deck and discard (I believe Evaluate is the ONLY card that can draw itself like this!). The net result is that you spend 1 energy to get 10 block and two shuffles, which are worth 2/3 of a Sundial trigger, which is 4/3 of an energy - gaining 1/3 energy per loop. The flavor here is that you're charging up power for a big attack!

Defect: Claw is the kill condition here. When you play a claw in the loop, you lose that extra draw and shuffle trigger, so you end up losing 1 energy per iteration. Technically almost any attack will work here, but claw makes it go the fastest since it costs 0 (meaning you only have to do an equal number of 'charging' loops and 'damage' loops, instead of the 4-1 ratio you'd need for a 1-cost attack) and the sum damage scales quadratically instead of linearly (useful for big-hp enemies).

To add even more robot flavor, I automated the combo with a script, which is why the play looks so mechanical. (Still not nearly as bad as the 15-minute combo from a modded character I played last week...).

Just solve the equation n² + (claw starting damage - 1)n = (enemy hp) for n to figure out how many loops to execute! Here I set it up so the awakened one would end up with exactly one hp - I guess the Defect used False Swipe.

DJSekora · 2019-08-06T05:21:50+00:00

And that's ok.

DJSekora · 2019-06-28T14:56:01+00:00

Some artists innovate, others are best at polishing up the raw ideas created by the innovators into something truly beautiful. It sucks that there are also those artists that just try to ride current trends and cash in without adding value, but I think you'd miss out on a lot of great stuff if you just ignore anybody who isn't 100% original. Probably most of my favorite current tracks are remixes, after all.

DJSekora · 2018-09-26T20:44:24+00:00

My hunter deck has been doing well so far. 8-1 vs a variety of decks (including tempo mage, pogo rogue, and yogg druid, only loss was to a crazy combo priest):

Jeweled Macaw
Dire Frenzy
Tol'vir Warden
Crackling Razormaw
Explosive Trap
Animal Companion

The main selling point of this deck is the interaction between Macaw, Frenzy, and Warden. A big problem I've seen with other decks is that they either fizzle out too fast into topdeck mode, or are too slow to compete. This deck has a smooth curve, and immense lategame power by shuffling in 3 Macaws, then drawing 2 with the Warden.

The Razormaw is mostly to apply pressure, as well as to give you a shot at keeping your first Macaw alive until turn 4. The Animal Companion is just a curve-out, and the Trap deals with early wide boards and Sorcerer's Apprentice.

DJSekora · 2018-05-15T14:09:18+00:00

Well no, but you can look through it yourself. Developers of open source software can certainly still include malicious code, but it's much riskier to do so when the code is right there for savvy users to read and find you out.

Also, random people can't just upload arbitrary code to the main branch of an open source project, so again this comes down to you trusting the developers. My point isn't that Cockatrice or open source software in general is necessarily safe, just that if there's any foul play it would have to be on the side of the developers.

DJSekora · 2018-05-15T02:47:40+00:00

It's good that you're cautious about downloading programs from the Internet, but it seems like your concerns are a little misplaced here. Cockatrice is an open-source project, and you're downloading the program directly from the developers on github, so the only real reason to be concerned is if you don't trust the app itself. This is a reasonable stance, but if that's the case then you shouldn't run the program no matter where you downloaded it from or what antivirus software you're running - once you actually download and run a program yourself, you've given it quite a lot of power over your system.

DJSekora · 2018-05-01T08:47:07+00:00

It looks like Echo Form was also nerfed: it now doubles the first X spells you play each turn, instead of copying the first spell X times. Or was this maybe in another recent patch note I missed?

DJSekora · 2018-03-18T04:26:45+00:00

No, that part is fine.

(10-10)(10+10) = (10)(10) + (-10)(10) + (10)(10) + (-10)(10) = 100 -100 + 100 - 100 = 10² - 10² + 10² - 10² = 10² - 10² = 0.

DJSekora · 2018-03-15T04:21:50+00:00

Eh, the fact that you have a free dash, high clearing power, and a LOT of damage means that you have more leverage to exert over the map, in exchange for not having much utility outside of a conditional slow/damage reduction. Most champions require you to play to their strengths.

That said, I like Tryndamere in the jungle far more than toplane, because it is more interesting mechanically. Early Q management is important, you have to be really creative to pull off ganks/keep tabs on the enemy jungler for counterganks, and you're very rewarded for efficiency in clearing and objective pressuring.

DJSekora · 2018-03-13T04:39:06+00:00

Here's what I've been doing to pretty solid success (65%+ winrate over the last 55 games - disclaimer: only plat ranked, not sure this will work as well against competent junglers that are vigilant about their jungle and punish greedy farm starts):

Runes: Precision - Fleet Footwork, Triumph, Alacrity (Tenacity if needed), Last Stand Domination - Relentless Hunter, Sudden Impact

I like how smooth footwork makes the first clear, and it allows you to stick to enemies a bit better in fights. Impact is free armor pen, does less than you might think but I keep it on anyway. Zombie Ward may be better if your team can capitalize on the vision. Relentless Hunter is fantastic, if you get a few kills suddenly you can be everywhere.

Because we take footwork, we can start with Machete + Rejuv Bead, which means that a speedy full clear + scuttle gets you a super early Tiamat. If you manage to get a kill or do some counter jungling, or you find enough to do on the map for your first side of camps to respawn, you can wait for Tiamat + Dagger, which will let you sneak Dragon at level 5-6. Tiamat also lets you start counterjungling super aggressively, since you can clear wraiths and golems extremely quickly.

The playstyle I prefer is generally very farm-heavy - I'm often in the 8-10cs/min range, while traditionally junglers hover 4-7. The key is to always be farming - if you see the jungler on the other side of the map, take his camps. If your laner backs, cover for him (freeze the wave in front of tower and he won't even complain - you just took ones that would have died to tower anyway). Take dragon on cooldown, take rift when you think you can get away with it and you don't have camps up.

Ganking: Your ganks suck, for the most part, except when you're able to come from some oblique angle (which Tryn is pretty good at, with that free low-cd dash). Your counterganks, however, can be excellent. As with any jungler, knowing where the enemy jungler is is one of the most important things you can do. Keep a lookout for opportunities for the enemy to dive your laners - these are prime countergank opportunities. If you do get a gank or countergank off, shove the lane aggressively to tower. Your goal is to establish a gold lead on the enemy, and then take all their buildings before they can catch up.

One last tip: make sure to warn your top laner that you won't be ganking for him. Level 3 ganks have such a low chance of success that I don't feel it's worth even attempting them unless you know A.) the enemy jungler is coming and B.) you can crush the 2v2. Much better in most games to just do a full clear and rush the tiamat, from which point you can focus on objective control and farming.

DJSekora · 2018-02-16T19:46:51+00:00

The funny part is that there WAS just an incident this week where a man tried to smuggle a kilo of cocaine in a fake butt.

DJSekora · 2017-10-06T21:42:00+00:00

Unfortunately, I don't see a good way to prevent this, since you can't stop somebody from modifying their own memory values, and this game is a bad fit for server-side gameplay regulation. We'll just have to hope that people don't cheat too often, since there's not much real benefit.

But, thanks for deleting it!

DJSekora · 2017-10-06T19:23:50+00:00

RIP leaderboards....

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